THIS CUP

By Paul Fabian

In late 1938, two girls flee from their university in Paris after learning of an SS plot to murder them in an attempt to seize the most powerful ancient relic of all: The Holy Grail. With Gestapo spies setting them on the run, the two must now comb the Holy Land for clues to uncover what it is abo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rising Winds Press
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987803103

Paul Fabian

Paul Fabian holds a B.A. in political science and religious studies from the College of the Holy Cross. He is from Salem, Massachusetts.

Book preview

PART I

SIEGE PERILOUS

CHAPTER 1

Glastonbury Tor

Somerset, England

September 14th, 1938

The pale white sunlight of dawn peaked over the clouds and kissed the patchwork of sheep pastures and enclosed bocages of England’s Somerset Levels; verdant growths of rush and bracken were sparkling with the brisk morning’s foggy dew; amid the lush tree lines, the sails of stone tower mills spun over boggy mires while shepherds herded their free-roaming droves of livestock down the drovers’ byways along the Levels’ hedgerows and split-rail fences for the seasonal transhumance.

For 19-year-old ingénue Psalmodie Vingt-Trois visiting from Paris, Glastonbury’s bucolic landscape was a far cry from the skyline of London: A grimy crucible of commerce, finance, and industry, where smokestacks and derricks vied against steeples and clock towers for the soul of the metropolitan city. Though London’s atmosphere was always choked with smog the color of dirty cotton wool, Glastonbury’s was humid and sweet with an emanating earthy scent.

Psalmodie lay on her back, lost in the shade inside the lone looming tower of the ancient Church of Saint Michael, which surmounted a cloud-cutting hillock and overlooked the slighted ruins of the enormous Benedictine Glastonbury Abbey. Resting on her abdomen was a wooden mazer filled with fresh water; the magical cup so valued and desperately sought out by the locals. In that moment, only two things mattered: Her own knightly conviction, and the cup in her hands, all brought together upon this legendary Isle of Avalon—the very resting place of King Arthur himself—, as the gods seemed to have quietly fated upon her.

To drink from it for a chance at eternal life, as her father had always told her.

All around her, a vast and blanketing oceanic cloud flooded through the landscape and swallowed the horizon. Psalmodie felt the cool air of this panoramic void sweep over her chapped lips and her fair, faintly freckled face. She closed her blue eyes and inhaled the placid solitude of the enchanted Isle deep into herself.

Psalmodie knew it was not always this peaceful. Even in Arthur’s time, when the Roman Empire still ruled over the Britons, the pagan Celtic druids convoked festivals where large wickerwork idols were stuffed with humans and animals before being set ablaze, burning the sacrificial victims alive. Such legends, she recalled, were written by Roman chroniclers, perhaps with the aim to smear Celtic culture. Such a ritual was a far cry from the Celtic motif of the enchanted cauldron, capable of resurrecting dead warriors; one of many inspirations for the Holy Grail itself.

Death became life and became death and life again.

As she reflected on this eternal cycle of existence, an odd blend of dread and relief made its way into her heart when she heard the sound of footfalls crunching over saturated macadam; the sound called her eyes to the Gothic archway of the tower, and she saw that standing under it was her friend, an olive-skinned Afro-Arab woman. Psalmodie’s shoulders softened once she recognized the concern and disappointment in her friend’s face.

"Comment ça va, Shiloh?" Psalmodie said; her soft voice was a thick, but dainty Anglo-Aquitaine accent.

Psalmodie saw the dark blue kerchief loosely tied over Shiloh’s tousled, blunt cut brown hair, with some small wisps curling from her brow and temples, framing the sensitive features of her gamine face. Her soulful eyes were hazel, but they glowed a limpid amber color in the white dawn sunlight. Psalmodie also noticed that Shiloh had been wearing her usual attire: Calf-high cuffed boots over loose green harem pants along with a quilted burnt sienna jerkin over a muslin-sleeved pullover undershirt. Shiloh never did fit in with the traditional Parisian decorum, but to Psalmodie’s pity, no one ever seemed to have expected much from an outcast foreigner anyway.

How’s your spiritual retreat up in Whitby going for you? Shiloh asked with a weary cadence. It seems like you’re a hair off course. Or was it that you got off at London before your train left for York? She stepped closer into Psalmodie’s view, forcing a wan smile before dropping it back to that same emotionally exhausted countenance… almost as if she wanted to hurt.

Shiloh’s presence atop the hill obviously presaged what Psalmodie knew would have been a caravan of uniformed goons and suits making its way up the hill’s concrete path to apprehend her. Psalmodie pushed herself to standing and rushed to the archway to scan the foot of the hill. Just as she expected, she saw the straggling procession rising from the cruel world that lay beneath the cloud. The West Mercia constabulary and the curators from the National Trust, all there for the medieval mazer she had stolen from the Powell Estate all the way back in Wales.

The Cwpan Nanteos, otherwise known as the Nanteos Cup.

I can’t sleep, Psalmodie said. She turned to face her friend, although she couldn’t have brought herself to fully look at her. I can’t eat. I can’t breathe. Everywhere I go, I can’t stop seeing him.

Your father? Shiloh asked.

A silence befell them as they stole uneasy glances at each other. Psalmodie fixed her dark blonde hair behind her ear, though her plait had already been unfurled. Then her eyes finally met her friend’s gaze. So how did you know where to find me?

Shiloh shrugged. "Well, I am your roommate, and you don’t do a very good job keeping your bucket list from me; you’ve hardly been quiet about this place."

I know, Psalmodie said with a resigned chuckle. Her smile was short-lived and her abashed regard towards Shiloh turned more curious. Though Shiloh had enough self-control for two, she wasn’t quite as headstrong as Psalmodie. Even so, since the day they had met, Psalmodie knew that there was always something underlying Shiloh’s reserved demeanor. You know… Psalmodie started, I read somewhere that there actually used to be an ancient Roman temple in Londinium dedicated to the mystery cult of the Egyptian goddess of rebirth, Isis.

Shiloh nodded indifferently. And you’re mentioning this to me because…?

Psalmodie ventured, For all your talk of God and religion and all that other stuff, you’ve always seemed too awkward with everyone on campus, but I’m sure there’s nothing you can say about yourself that will really surprise me. Why don’t you just talk to me?

About what?

"About your parents in Egypt or wherever you’re from. About you. About anything." Psalmodie saw her friend’s face had again turned downcast and distant. Without another word, Shiloh held out her hand to receive the cup that Psalmodie had stolen. Instead, she noticed Psalmodie reaching for something in her pocket. With shaking fingers, she produced a ripped piece of paper. My father sent me this, Psalmodie said, handing it to Shiloh.

The paper read:

Shiloh recognized it was a French-annotated Atbash telegram. An ancient Judaic substitution cipher made up of a reversely mapped alphabet that corresponded to their opposite letters; A is Z, B is Y, and so on.

Translated, it read, Le chemin est une rose à l’épée dans la pierre.

Shiloh’s face shifted. What is this?

Psalmodie engaged her friend and read verbatim, "‘The way is a rose to the sword in the stone.’ He’s definitely trying to tell me something about this cup!" Her wild eyes leveled on Shiloh’s. Shiloh, listen to me. This Nanteos Cup, it has to be the best candidate for the legendary relic.

Psalmodie, how do you know it isn’t just another hoax? Shiloh asked.

It’s not a hoax! Psalmodie protested. It can’t be! My father said so!

Maybe his message meant something else?

How? This civil parish lies along the same ley line as the city of Lancaster, whose medieval crest was a red Tudor rose! And if this place is indeed the Isle of Avalon, then this ought to have been where King Arthur forged his sword Excalib— Psalmodie caught herself and shrank back from what she saw in Shiloh’s eyes.

Just give me the cup, Shiloh begged, and let’s just go home. I’ve already spoken to the Trust; I told them not to press any charges if they saw that the cup was safe.

Stroking the wych elm grain of the mazer one last time, Psalmodie sighed and surrendered it to her companion. It was in Shiloh’s hand, but Psalmodie did not let go. The two locked eyes, and she read the same sadness in Shiloh’s gaze. When Psalmodie saw this, her face fell small and she nodded subtly in defeat. Then, with her tongue in her cheek, Psalmodie deferred the barren relic to Shiloh. Psalmodie paused for thought, but then broke away and brushed past Shiloh’s shoulder.

Psalmodie? Shiloh called, following shortly after her before stopping at the terrace outside the tower. Some uniforms received Psalmodie while two others leisurely converged on Shiloh to receive the priceless artifact.

We thank you, Mademoiselle al-Ahad, one of the men said. May we have the mazer now, please?

Shiloh responded with a sigh, So you will keep your word?

He presented his outstretched hand and responded, We’ll place her under arrest in the meantime, but as we agreed, my dear, so long as there’s no lasting damage to it, we will not pursue any charges or fines and no one else will ever have to know. In any case, however, I should be frank with you: I don’t think your friend will be able to come back to our museum establishments for quite some time now, if ever.

Shiloh looked away and nodded at this. She looked down at the mazer and turned it over to make sure that there was no lasting damage to it. Once she handed it over to them, she saw the small Coptic cross tattoo on her right wrist: The seal of her echoing past.

A’udhu billahi, she whispered in Arabic.

The clouds parted, and she saw that the many market towns and hamlet settlements of King Arthur’s fallen kingdom had come into striking relief.

CHAPTER 2

Wewelsburg Castle

Büren, Germany

September 18th, 1938

The Court of Legion had been convened…

Through the choir’s disoriented chanting—the morbid, depraved moans of possessed men being tortured in an uncanny darkness—, the clamor of the infamous Schutzstaffel police force resounded through the halls of the secluded, mansard-roofed Renaissance fortress of Wewelsburg; the mystical center of the world destined to reign beyond the countryside of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Oh du, dem Unrecht geschah, grüßt dich!

The conclave where the cry echoed from was known as the Hall of the Dead, a dark and circular crypt of flagstone adorned top to bottom with chiseled Armanen Runic symbols that immortalized the Schutzstaffel’s contrived heritage, from the spiraling black sun emblazoned on the walls and floors of the castle to the golden, square-hooked swastika affixed to the room’s zenith. At the very center of the room, however, was a large circular pool of a viscous, molasses-like liquid that was black as onyx and sin.

Around the pool’s ledges were torches of blue and yellow flames from which a rose-scented attar incense permeated the air like a thick smoke; a testament to the fortuitous spirit of their völkisch supremacism. Surrounding the pool were twelve members of the Reichsführer’s Personal Staff sitting on pedestals along the perimeter of the crypt in the very manner of the Arthurian Round Table legends.

Entering through the doors on the other end of the crypt was a portly septuagenarian Austrian man, holding an ivory-handled crozier and donning a bishop’s pontifical headdress with ecclesiastical vestments. Though he donned clerical regalia, he wore a tab collar with two rhombus-shaped lightning bolts: The SS acronym of the Schutzstaffel. His chubby, sagging jowls, gibbous eyes, and the Führer’s same, short toothbrush mustache bespoke his mystical and romantic devotion to blood and soil rather than faith and doctrine.

Brigadeführer Karl Maria Wiligut Weisthor.

A folk esotericist known to all branches of the SS as the secret King of Germany. After fighting for the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the Great War and spending three years incarcerated in an asylum in Salzburg for psychotic schizophrenia, he rose to become the patriarchal hierophant for the National Socialist New European Order based in their new occult cathedral.

Accompanying him was a chief dignitary of the Waffen-SS, anxious to find his own son in his liminal occasion of rebirth from the Earth into the light. Processing behind him were the patriarch’s three acolytes, wearing ceremonial black hooded cloaks and ominously androgynous volto masks. They rocked their bowed heads, silently commemorating the Neopagan sacrament as if possessed by a single mind.

The father stepped forth before the pool while his wife—who was herself newly indoctrinated with this new Nordic truth—reluctantly awaited by his side. Wiligut Weisthor mounted a pulpit at the far end of the crypt for his sermon; a benediction of this Irministic baptism by fire was necessary before officiating in the presence of their most glorious imperator. 

The high priest’s eyes rolled up in his entranced state. His lips and gums were smeared with tar-black soot, and his mouth hung open like a gaping maw, exposing within a tongue that poked out from crooked incisors like an awl. Then he elevated his hands, as if to praise the unconquered sun of Valhalla, and formally commenced the Irministic paternoster prayer in the Gothic liturgical language for his council of shadows.

He gibbered hideously, Vater unsar. Gib uns Deinen Geist und Deine Kraft im Stoffe…—Our Father. Give us your spirit and your strength in matter…

With this prayer, there came the thick sound of churning and gurgling from the center of the pool’s surface. The father and Wiligut Weisthor watched in joyous reverence as the glossy tar bulged, and a black, bulbous shape rose up and stretched into a humanoid form, the dark sin completely coating his body like a mucous membrane, giving the wiry creature the appearance of a faceless clay sculpture. After this rejuvenating fermentation of his Being, the boy held still, surrendering himself to a joy until now known only to the insane.

And then, in synchrony with the high priest’s circular prayers, he coiled and flailed his arms through the air; erratic gyrations of ritual lamentation for the one they all knew in their hearts to have been the one true God amidst the Æsir, the vast pantheon of true gods…

Overwhelmed by the horrific sight, the mother looked away and sobbed quietly into her overjoyed husband’s chest.

As the sermon went on in the Hall of the Dead, the gaunt silhouette of the 34-year-old, half-Jewish Obersturmführer Otto Wilhelm Rahn paced restively outside the doors. His neurotic eyes shot from one thing to another, from floor tile to brick to window. He then glanced out the window to scan the distant Teutoburg Forest, the legendary site of the Germanic tribes’ unified triumph over the Roman legions in the time of Christ.

But off in the distance, he saw an oval-shaped blemish hovering over the cityscape of Dortmund; it was the fortress-sized Graf Zeppelin that Rahn heard the Reich Ministry of Propaganda was testing to fly over the Sudetenland… that is, if Adolf Hitler somehow managed to wrest the land under his control. Only the day before, the Führer had established the Sudetendeutsches Freikorps, a covert paramilitary in Czechoslovakia with the express purpose of fanning political instability. Apparently, the Ministry of Propaganda had high hopes for them, already preparing for a celebration despite the infamous Hindenburg disaster over a year prior.

But to Rahn, the Graf Zeppelin’s droning propellers rumbled through the landscape like a thundering plague of locusts.

He rubbed the angular cheekbones and aquiline nose of his weasel-like face before looking down at his chewed fingertips; his hands were bony and delicate, like those of a pianist, although he used them more for typewriting and, as of late, nibbling off nail cuticles. Trying to distract himself from this vice, he turned to another by lighting one of his cigars in his mouth. He waited anxiously, repeatedly looking towards the light at the end of the dark, torch-lit corridor; he felt the corridor become something of an antechamber to an operating room.

It was when Rahn briefly removed his fedora to fix his slicked-back, receding hairline that he heard two men’s voices and footsteps approaching, but for a man such as the one he anticipated, he recognized his sharp, authoritative accent. Rahn cocked his eyes towards the silhouetted uniforms approaching from the light. The man on the left looked up from a pile of papers and grinned passively at Rahn. From the man’s square jawline and neat comb over, the Obersturmführer recognized that it was his fellow comrade, the SS poet and radio broadcaster Kurt Eggers.

But to Eggers’ right was the man Rahn so dreaded. He looked at the man’s black and heavily decorated paramilitary dress uniform with the crimson armband and the golden aiguillette looping over his breast pocket and shoulder. He then saw the man’s round face with an unusually weak chin and the pince-nez glasses over his monotonous glare. When Rahn realized that he couldn’t stop staring at the spectral apparition, he quickly stood at attention and threw up the salute of the mass party with a rigid obeisance to him.

The man who co-founded the Ahnenerbe e.V. think tank and secret society with the express intention of setting the pure ones upon their rightful destiny for Lebensraum, the conquest for new living space for the Aryan race. The man who, through the eclectic racial theories of his SS, was helping to realize the Führer’s vision for yet another unified triumph of the Germanic peoples. The man who consistently sponsored Rahn’s right-guided quest all these years.

Herr Rahn! Eggers greeted. How nice of you to join us for our good friend’s fledging son.

Yes, I try to be present at every moment the gods and valkyries of the Æsir redeliver their true chosen people, Rahn remarked, looking to evoke some reaction from his unamused superior, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.

As Eggers shuffled through his papers one last time, Himmler’s piercing, chillingly resentful eyes considered Rahn and the remark he made, as if trying to decide whether it was punishable for being too much. He then focused towards Rahn’s mouth and said pointedly, I see that some of us are still not without the commonplace vices.

It took Rahn a moment to figure out what Himmler meant, but once he realized it, he promptly tossed his cigar out the window next to him. I am still working through this problem, sir. I am, however, still sober. A long silence persisted after Rahn’s remark. Himmler’s eyes bored into him, and Rahn found it difficult returning his gaze.

Herr Eggers, Himmler started. I see that you have already made Herr Rahn’s acquaintance.

Eggers looked up with an arched brow between Himmler and Rahn. "Well, certainly! He and I share the same publicist. What’s more is that we also actually worked together earlier this year at a club I organized for the Dietrich Eckart Haus back in Dortmund. Herr Rahn here gave a riveting lecture on the problem of Lucifer’s fall. Eggers then looked at Rahn and smirked. Hey, did you like the salute I closed your lecture with? Of course, I meant it as a joke, but word spread to high priest Wiligut Weisthor and I think he took quite a liking to it; looking back, I find it quite suitable for the spirit of his liturgy."

Of course, Rahn assented, "it does capture the spirit of our nation’s savior, the light-bearer; only now, there will be no more ‘Messiah’ to exorcize and demonize him… ‘for we are many…’"

Himmler placed the quote from Christian Scripture. "‘For we are many…’ That is what ‘Legion’ said, as the so-called ‘Gospels’ of Mark and Luke referred to him as, correct?"

Indeed, Rahn said, flashing a nervous smile. Legion is the light-bearer’s other name, although as Herr Eggers can attest, I still prefer to refer to him as… Rahn trailed off when he saw Eggers’ grin drop.

Eggers turned to face Himmler with grave concern. Our Führer’s speech in Nuremberg twelve days ago is proof enough that he might denounce your Ahnenerbe’s mission as merely occult, having no place in the National Socialist Programme.

Himmler looked down and licked his lips as he deliberated over Eggers’ words. Quite so, quite so. The Führer was right to profess our post-Christian völkisch spirit, although he has yet to understand that the Aryan solidarity of our party line can only go so far without a more… transcendent sense of accountability.

Certainly, one that goes beyond the Jewish monopoly on faith, Rahn interjected in a doting vein. Himmler and Eggers stared at Rahn for a moment, almost as if he offended them somehow with a distasteful comment. Rahn withdrew his gaze and kept quiet.

Eggers sighed and looked back at Himmler. My Reichsführer, I have studied theology, archeology, and the Sanskrit language of our Indo-Aryan forerunners; I was also a Lutheran minister before Christ eventually led me to our Führer for the promise of a new Reformation. I still believe that we can yet appropriate more Christian trappings in our quest for the conversion of the Aryan peoples’ national spirit. If there is anything I can contribute to that end, my Reichsführer, please, let me help you⁠—

Himmler gestured towards the Hall of the Dead. "Go forth and share in our fellow comrade’s glory. I shall have Officer Günter d’Alquen nominate you as his replacement as editor-in-chief of Das Schwarze Korps should he decide to step down in the foreseeable future."

Both Rahn and Eggers gaped at Himmler in disbelief. Our SS’s official newspaper? Eggers exclaimed.

Himmler smiled. "Bolshevik, Papist, Freemason; no apologist or moral authority can ever match the great spirit of our new knighthood… ‘for we are many…’"

Barely able to contain his delight, Eggers straightened, clicked his heels, and gave Himmler a short bow before starting for the Hall’s door. Himmler’s pleased gaze followed him, and when he turned back to face the skeletal figure still standing before him, his smile faded immediately. Rahn tried holding Himmler’s glare, but his terrified eyes kept blinking and returning to the tiled floor.

Come, Himmler said. I have been meaning to review something with you.

Rahn grimaced. Sir?

Himmler beckoned him again towards the end of the corridor. Rahn looked back towards the ceremony one last time before following the Reichsführer. Rahn turned the corner and saw the Reichsführer standing by an archway not too different from the entrance to the Hall of the Dead. With apprehensive deliberation, Rahn approached his superior, who, to his disquiet, fixated his unblinking eyes on the locked door before him.

Is there a problem, sir? Rahn asked.

Do you have Wewelsburg’s keys? Himmler asked, still not breaking away from the door’s handle. Or does high priest Wiligut Weisthor have them?

Staving his hesitation, Rahn rushed into the pockets of his soutane-like overcoat, but in his panicked haste, he dropped the keys. After scrambling his fingers over the floor, he picked up the keys and fidgeted through them before finding the one that locked into the door’s hole. As Rahn stood back up, he noticed Himmler looking down his nose at him.

They stepped in and found themselves in the Gralsraum, a heptagonal room not too different from the crypt. The walls in this one, however, were lined with shelves stacked with tomes and grimoires on the occult, alchemical wisdom of the forgotten, ancient mystery schools: Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, and Rosicrucianism, among countless others.

Across the room from the door was a statuette niche in the wall housing a shadow box display with an inscription on the bottom frame: V.I.T.R.I.O.L. The acronym for the alchemical motto of the Rosicrucian Order’s allegorical founder, Christian Rosenkreuz: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem—Visit the interior of the Earth; by rectification thou shalt find the hidden stone.

Inside the display were two small black stones; haematite meteorites of pure iron that Rahn found while caving the prehistoric Lombrives Cave of Ussat-les-Bains in Southern France. Known as the Lapis Exilis, they were meant to replicate the object of Himmler and Rahn’s aspirations; the sacred panacea of all philosophies and mythologies. The meteorites’ purpose as a stop-gap for the actual stone that fell from the heavens, however, was sterile of the true power Himmler and Rahn had hoped it would imitate.

How goes your quest for the treasure? Himmler asked.

It is quite illusive, sir, Rahn said uneasily, carefully measuring each word, but I am confident that it is within our grasp.

Himmler clenched his jaw but kept silent, absorbing Rahn’s words. After another clamor from the crypt sounded through the corridors, Himmler asked, Run through it for me again, will you? How is it that you intend to find it?

Rahn’s throat tensed as he gulped. Do you want me to restate everything? Surely, you haven’t forgo⁠—

You should know by now, Herr Rahn, that I never forget, Himmler said, crossing towards the shadow box and removing the meteorites from their place; with a man like the Reichsführer, Rahn sensed an incident coming on. "I am, however, concerned that you have. So please, Herr Rahn, if you will indulge my question?"

Rahn took two steps back and nodded. So, do you recall the famed archaeologist, Dr. Heinrich Schliemann?

Do tell, Herr Rahn: Why is that name so important here? Himmler responded crisply, holding one of the meteorites close to his mouth and spitting on it before rubbing it against the other.

Though Rahn sensed derision, he cleared his throat and went on, "Back in 1873, he found the lost mythical city of Troy in Asia Minor by following clues embedded in Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad. A truly astounding method, not to say deemed highly unorthodox by academia since it practically converted historical myth into fact. But I have great faith that if I applied it to the legends of King Arthur, we will most certainly substantiate our claim to the⁠—"

Herr Rahn, Himmler cut off, pausing again to hear the valorous clamoring of his chosen people reverberating through the walls of the castle. Did I ever tell you how our regime came about?

Rahn’s voice faltered a moment. I-I believe not, sir. No.

Before our Führer was at the vanguard of this new movement, you may find it hard to believe that it was founded on the principles of this very treasure you seek now.

Rahn wiped away the sweat on his lip and held his elbows. I beg your pardon?

The Deusch Arbeiterpartei, which as you may well know served as the scaffolding for our great Reich, was itself substantially scaffolded by an underground society known as the Thule-Gesellschaft.

The Thule-Gesellschaft? Rahn responded. Did they not themselves draw from the Order of the New Templars, who were the first to profess our Aryan swastika?

Himmler went on, It is little known among our fellow comrades—and unfortunately, even some among my own ranks—that this ‘Thule-Gesellschaft’ was founded by Rudolf von Sebottendorf, the Ordensmeister of one noble brotherhood before his eventual conversion to Mohammedanism.

Rahn felt Himmler’s foreboding aspect pressing him further against the wall. He saw on Himmler’s face that his appraisal of the precious stones in his hands had ashened with contempt… for his saliva had caused the meteorites to weep a sanguine iron oxidation; the mineral property that Rahn understood was eventually foolishly mistaken for the blood of Jesus Christ.

Himmler declared, "The Munich lodge of the Germanenorden Walvater von Heiligen Gral."—The Teutonic Order of the Triune god Wotan and the Holy Grail. Then his contempt burst out and he threw the meteorites down before Rahn’s feet; the stones’ red fragments flecked across the floor like spattered liquid. Himmler drew closer to Rahn’s agitated face. Our revolution, under the leadership of our Führer, was inaugurated by a prophecy of the Holy Grail; a prophecy that, despite his own disbelief, came to him in his moment of triumph over his own struggle. Do you understand what I am telling you?

Rahn’s teeth were clenched inside his shut mouth; he could only mumble, Yes, sir.

Having reminded Rahn of their mission, Himmler walked over the blood-stained floor and tried to imagine Germany’s uncertain future. "Our people’s need for Lebensraum encompasses not only their need for physical space, but spiritual as well. I have just spoken with Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg and Hanns Kerrl, who is our Reichsminister of Church Affairs, on the sensitive nature of the Christian question. 

"These men are both trying their best to wean our people away from this mongrel desert religion through our German Faith Movement so that they may come home to their true blood and soil, and yet, virtually the entirety of the Aryan race insists on enslaving itself to this Nazarene Judaism such like the untermensch. It doesn’t help that Pope Pius XI, despite the Führer’s concordat with him, denounced our nation’s pagan destiny in his encyclical last year. Although for the moment, we continue to share a greater enemy in the Jewish functionaries of the Soviet Union.

"But be that as it may, our Kirchenkampf—our struggle with the Roman Church in the fatherland—does not appear to have an end in sight. While I and some of my fellow devotees in the party have a great appreciation for how Jesus Christ has incubated our peoples’ religious instincts all these centuries, the Roman Church in particular continues to make inroads into our party’s efforts to reveal the final Aryan Gospel. Our Führer spoke of a ‘the brotherhood of Templars around the Holy Grail of pure blood.’ We have a sacred obligation to that honor! We need the purified Grail now, for the sake of our peoples’ continued devotion."

Rahn started to respond, but he instead trailed Himmler’s raised finger towards the window in the hallway outside the Gralsraum’s archway. He made his way to the window sill and beheld a prophecy of his own.

A piercing whistle shrilled outside, and Rahn saw, beyond the midsommar maypoles, a procession of emaciated laborers—mostly Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses—filing in from the tipples and quarries surrounding Wewelsburg Castle to the barracks and watchtowers of the neighboring Niederhagen konzentrationslager. After the whistle came the silence, and in such silence, Rahn saw that the muddy ground was strewn with stiffened corpses reduced to skin and bone.

Oddly, it was the chirping of birds that transfixed Rahn; the perpetual and unaffected stillness of nature—no different from his time in Southern France—that muted the sounds of the distant butchery. To Rahn’s horror, such silence almost made it feel banal and inconsequential… almost as though it were simply an extension of the serene nature surrounding it.

The Holy Grail, Himmler continued, punching his fist into his palm. "It gave our Führer the necessary inspiration to bring us out of the infamy of Versailles all the way to the Enabling Act in less than fifteen years; the power to stir and convert the masses to his cause. That power brought us to this. And mind you that, in all of this time, the Grail had merely spoken to him. Imagine, now, what power would come of all this if he could actually touch it. Now you—you—have brought the Grail within reach.

I have granted you 1,000 Reichsmarks a month to wander Italy, France, Spain, Scotland, Denmark, Iceland. You were meant to be the final panel of our people’s triptych; in yourself, you summarized the next becoming of our Führer, the Third Reich, and all of our people, and yet… every time, you return empty-handed. What have you to say for yourself?

Rahn tensely reached for his breast pocket and adjusted his collar before holding his hands over his waist. On his ring finger, he felt his manacle: The Totenkopf ring, or the Death’s Head Ring. A brass signet ring much like the